The unwritten rules of remote communication

I’ve had a discussion at work recently about the ‘etiquette’ of communicating remotely. To my surprise, some people were unclear about the proper way of communicating; meaning when it is appropriate to call someone, or send an instant message, or type it up in an email.

I was surprised because I sort of stumbled into a team that was already using these methods when I joined, so I just picked it up from them. I was working for the Port Singapore Authority (PSA) at the time, a multinational harbor corporation that operates harbors all over the world. My colleagues were located all over the world as well. In the morning I could have a call with colleagues from China and Singapore. In the afternoon I’d be chatting with people in The Netherlands, Belgium, Portugal, and Italy. At the end of the day I’d be conferencing with people in Panama. Some colleagues were regularly flying all over the world, others just worked from offices in the countries mentioned above. We couldn’t be located in the same room physically, so this was all we knew.

Even though these people were all over the world, I still considered them to be the same distance away as regular colleagues at the office. Maybe not at first, but that’s just the way it ended up feeling like after a couple of days. If I ever needed anything immediately, I’d just call them without a moments’ hesitation. If it could wait and was simple, I’d send them an instant message. If they were not available, or if it could wait and was complicated, I’d email them. I ‘learned’ these rules quickly because that’s exactly how they communicated with me from the very start.

So, that’s really all there’s too it I suppose:

• Call them if they’re available and it’s urgent
• Email them if they’re not available, or it’s not urgent and complicated
• Message them if they’re available, and it’s not urgent and not complicated

Now, I’ve heard people say that they still think of calling someone as having a higher barrier than just walking up to their desk at the office. However, walking up to their desk is worse than a call in my opinion. When you’re at my desk, it’s much harder to say that I don’t have time for you. When you call, I can just click the red button and I won’t have to deal with it. This is not rude, it’s just me saying that I don’t have time for you right now. You can then follow up with either a message (“call me back when you have time, I want to talk about X”) or an email (I wasn’t available, so that’s the alternative).

Most communication platforms have a status indicator. It’s perfectly reasonable to use it. Set your status to ‘do not disturb’ if you want to be available for emergencies, but otherwise don’t want to be bothered. Expect colleagues to honor that status, and call them out if they call you without an urgent matter. If you really don’t want to be disturbed by anything, then it’s perfectly reasonable to just go offline entirely for some time. Almost nothing is so important that it can’t wait a couple of hours. Of course, you need a reasonable balance here; you can’t just go offline all the time. I’d say going offline is something to use when you really need to make a deadline, and you won’t make it if anything disturbs you.

One last thing. If you send instant messages, please also say what you want to talk about. “Please call me back ASAP” is a horrible message to receive. I won’t be able to get that out of my mind until I call you back. “Please call me back, I need some help with X” is much better. “Please call me back, I need help with X, it’s urgent” is also good if it really is urgent.

Well, I hope that gives a few pointers. Good luck!

PS. there are no meetings that need everyone physically in the same room. I’ve worked on two projects for multiple years now where all the people can never physically be in the same room due to distance between workplaces. It works fine. If you don’t feel comfortable with it, maybe that’s on you then ;)